Buddhist monk urges escalation against 'malevolent' Tamil diaspora

A prominent Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and academic has urged the government to escalate its efforts to ‘dismiss the Tamil Diaspora’ and instead write a ‘victor’s history’ of Sri Lanka.

Medagoda Abhayatissa, a Sinhala Buddhist monk and professor in Pali at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura made the comments in an interview with Sri Lankan newspaper Daily News.

The monk said the previous government had been prone to “give in to the malevolent scripts of the Tamil Diaspora”.

“An effort should be made to dismiss the Tamil Diaspora from this role of writing Sri Lanka’s history in line with their sinister separatist political agenda,” he reiterated.

“The government must come up with a strong programme against disinformation campaigns launched against the country by certain organized sections of the Tamil Diaspora. They will try to push through these disinformation campaigns through anonymous reports or unproven reports. They are promoting these campaigns with the support of various INGOs.”

“The government, as the victors, must not give in to the influence of the Diaspora scripts, such as those found in the Darusman report or any other report,” he added, referring to the 2011 UN Panel of Experts report which found credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Sri Lankan military.

The comments came as Sri Lanka’s defence secretary called on the British government to share military intelligence and technology to combat the Tamil diaspora.

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